I have commited the ultimate sin...to put down a dead artist, even worse one who commited suicide

you are completely right, I shall find the biggest canvas in the world write the word Bollocks on it and everyone will be blown away by the the sheer size of my ego.

come on, you're just being stubborn now. you're a fairly smart guy, but if you insist on being right all the time you make yourself look stupid.

nobody is saying "bigger is better", but you clearly haven't appreciated rothko's work for what it's meant to be. we're trying to tell you that and you either refuse to understand or pretend not to understand for the sake of winning the argument.

knowing rothko from little houseprints is like knowing mahler from a tiny mono speaker the size of a coin. it's not that bigger is better, but when things are meant to be big, for good reason, smaller is worse. don't tell me you can build a little 4-inch tall "stonehenge" on your kitchen table and make it look like anything more than a pile of rocks. please perceive the analogy. thank you.

You do know that last post was a joke?

I agree with you as I said a lot of my favourite artists would be unappreciated in print. Apart from Manrique, this Swasea women called Sue Williams comes to mind. I'm not really arguing with you at all. My objection to Rothko and what I have seen of Rothko is purely down to my own asthetic prejuduces. I'm just not a fan of his and simular artists style. I just think personally there are many more exciting artists from his period that don't get as much mention as him. However when I am in London later on in the year I will go and have a look.

a joke? this is the internet-- you've seen the things people write in earnest? how are we to know?

anyway, i used to belittle postcard rothko as well not from "aesthetic prejudices" but due to insufficient information. then i was fortunate to see a retrospective on the guy. don't just have a look but stand in the presence of those things and then make up your mind. it's not really about mixing and matching colors, it's about what happens to you in the presence of the object... kinda like the 2001 monolith ha ha... hm, i can't explain very well but it's a very physical experience, not really an intellectual one.

To change the subject slightly, what do people think of the fluxus movement? I have mixed feelings towards it. Some artists like Geoffrey Hendricks or Paul Sharits are pure rubbish, but Al Hansen or Charlotte Moorman i don't mind so much.

i dont know enough about them to have an opinion

you want a smilie? here:

my favourite fluxus artists are nam june paik, dick higgins, joseph beuys and la monte young. i'm not 100% sure of what artists are considered fluxus and which aren't, but what i really appreciate and admire about the above artists is that they explored intergrating different medias into their work, from paik's video stuff, young's minimalism stuff w/ terry riley and steve reich, the performance art of beuys etc etc... due to this i think there are a huge amount of people that you could consider "fluxus" from people ranging from john cage to charles olsen. an interesting "movement" to say the least anyway.

Yes, that's true, my mixed feelings come exactly from the fact that it's one of those art movements that's really hard to pin down aesthetically, and that's because it embraces a wide range of medias (ie poetry, film, sculpture, music etc), but with various degrees of vision that differ from artist to artist. There doesn't seem to be a truly unified concept behind it, therefore it makes it more difficult to judge it.

I just feel the 'you have to see it' thing can be applied to many things. One could argue that you can't fully appreciate an album without seeing it live. The problem with this arguement is that it prevents any interlectual discussion of art. We are not always able to see these things in presence so to speak. Most of us wouldn't have be able to witness a Beatles concert. On the otherhand I don't wish to sound like im dismissing the 'experience' of art either. But I think its fair for me to hold opinions of certain elements of Rothko's work that I can see with my eyes. I have seen work by simular artists and it hasn't changed my opinion on them. Thats not to say either that at any given chance I wouldn't wnat to see Rothko in the flesh. Put plainly Rothko as far as I can judge is not my thing.

I dont know a great deal about fluxus. Except the obvious artists that most people would know about. I've started reading a book on it at the moment as it happens. I'm not really a huge believer in its principles. But its certainly interesting.

Yeah I think one of the problems is that its an extremely vague and wide label that covers too much.

Its reminds me though. I spent my entire Uni interview talking with the guy about Terry Riley and Steve Reich.

and album is an album and it's presented as such, and it is different from a live performance. however, it if it is a stereo and you can only hear one channel, then i'd say you can't fully appreciate the album. more closely, i'd say the same if you're hearing it in a shitty mp3.


intellectual discussions about things we don't know about are just wankery. it has been established that you don't know rothko, you only know the houseprints of prententious middle class people with cheap wallpaper. if you want to discuss cheap wallpaper, then you're qualified. if you want to discuss rothko prints, you're qualified as well. but you can't seriously discuss rothko when you don't know what you're talking about.

it's like wanting to argue about shakespeare by just reading the cliff notes and not the plays.

now let's hear from a real intellectual: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.


your stereo has only one channel.


you're like a virgin talking about sex. virgin! :p

go get deflowered. then tell us.

I agree with Washing Machine to an extent. If a work of art has any merit, it should be able to stand on its own legs whichever the scale it is being shown on, but this poses the problem of one not being able to see from very close the way it has been produced or its intended visual impact. Music is another kettle of fish, because it is produced mainly for home consumption in a version that is equal for everyone, therefore its live version might differ greatly or even better it.

you can certainly dicuss the subject matter of a work of art in those terms; however, the merits of a work of art can be lost in translation during the process of commercial reproduction and distribution.

looking at a photo of chartres cannot possibly compare to standing in the middle of that cathedral, just like pornographic photos have very little to do with the experience of sex acts. you can judge photos as photos (that's a great photo of chartres, that's a great porn picture), but not as the things they whose image they attempt to reproduce, i.e. you can't say that a porn picture is "a great orgasm".


^^ and i mean this picture with all of its intended french puns


the album and the live version are two different things altogether; while in the earlier times of recording an album was considered a "copy" of the original, advances in technology and cultural changes especially in popular music have come to revert the issue, where often the recorded piece is perceived as the original and the live performance an interpretation of it.

i'd love to stay & chat more but i have to shave & get going to some sunday lunch thing.

on the subject of fluxus i like Yoko Ono's book Grapefruit. and the collection of fluxus mail art at the tate modern is quite fun.

i would have thought rothko's work does not translate into a small scale print very well at all as the effect of the paintings are very much about the slight fluctuations in the colour and texture tht stand out amongst the enourmity of the canvas. these are obviously more pronounced in the original and would not be as visible in a print, you are more likely just to see a block of colour and pass it off as such. the rothko room in the tate made a huge impression on me, it was an awesome experience. if i had seen the same pictures in somebody's kitchen, i would have probably yawned them off. obviously, with other artists, this is not always the case, but i think with rothko, it is.

I quite like the entire fluxus movement and most of the artists associated with it. I particularly like Nam June Paik and all of the work that he has done with Charlotte Moorman. I think we need an artist to do for computers what Paik did for the television.

and speaking of Moorman... I recieved the Charlotte Moorman/Paik Tv Cello double LP as a birthday gift from a friend and its brilliant... I admire her alot, and want to buy her cello anthology, but I just cant justify spending $135 on it right now... or any album for that matter.

i recently bought a CD anthology of paik's sound stuff as well as a compilation of italian futurist music from the tate modern bookshop. the paik is wonderful, the futurist is 50/50. speaking of cellists, have you heard of okkyung lee? she works with free improv, it's amazing to hear explosive free improvisation with solo cello. i think she is on myspace.

I had'nt heard of her, thanks for the recommendation.
apparently she worked with Ikue Mori on Nihm, so I will definately have to give it a listen.

racehorse did you see okkyung lee on her recent uk tour?

she played a couple of shows in london, and the first was a travesty, whoever booked it had her play with people whose league she was cleary far above, it was kind of embarrasing to watch.

On the subject of Rothko. I was just talking with my friend who recently visited the Tate and was most unimpressed with the Rothko room. I will see it for myself soon and probebly come back with the same conclusion (this friend and I have much the same tastes). However if I don't I shall apologize fully and admit that I am wrong.

i don't think anyone wants you to apologise...

i've never seen her actually. i'm in jersey so it's quite hard to get out regularly to "the big smoke" as you say. but yeah, lee is fantastic and i'd be interested in seeing her when she next comes to the uk/france.

oh, i saw her last year at the stone-- she was wonderful, i picked up her cd, which is not improv but it's interesting enough (she warned us against it, ha ha). she played with a trombonist and some piano guy, i forget their names right now-- the trombonist was quite amazing, he's a teacher at NYU i think... hm... can't recall this second. but she's wonderful-- worth seeking.

Never been, but I've been to the Rothko room at the Modern Wing of the National Gallery in D.C. many times. Those paintings are great.

Seeing Rothko's works in a gallery setting is wholly different than little pictures in art books or online.

I liked what I've heard of Okkyung Lee's solo work, but the only thing I own that she's on is the split CD of My Cat is An Alien with her and Christian Marclay and that gave me a headache. It was really neurotic from what I remember, but maybe I should give it another chance.
I read she's releasing a solo album on Ecstatic Peace this year.

Yeah I can appreciate that. I suppose my dislike comes from that fact that ive seen so many sixth-form Rothko rip-offs. Thats not Rothko's fault. He's just one of those artists that have failed to impact on me yet. Maybe it will in time or after seeing it in a gallery setting.

Anyway back to something we can all agree on - G&G